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Originally Posted by Gaskal
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Those are all great points. However, would anyone put it past Vegas doing it anyways? Or the league for allowing them to do it anyways? One of the first arguments is that eichel could not be expected to sit on LTIR all the way through the regular season and then just be ready for playoffs. That’s exactly what kucherov did. The work around is that he got almost 2 months of practice in. Think about that… he got full-contact practice in and got to get into full game shape. Eichel could learn their system, spend months practicing and gelling with the team and be in the best shape of anyone come the start of playoffs.
All it takes as far as doctors or the league are concerned is for eichel to say “No, I’m not back to 100%. I’d be concerned about re-injuring myself after this serious surgery if I come back now.” The league would not do anything about it even if it was not true. He’s already virtually guaranteed miss the olympics so that severely lowers his motivation to rush back. Vegas would explain to him how much they need him to stay off the roster till playoffs so the team can be a powerhouse when the playoffs start. Otherwise, they would have to trade a bunch of guys and it would rip the team apart and he would be blamed for it. What is eichel going to say in that situation? “No, screw those guys, I want to play.” Definitely not.
I assume this is what Vegas is going to do. I think the value in their offer for eichel (and the flames marketing guy’s complaint) will be how little salary they are going to send back because of all the LTIR players they have right now. Of course, the eichel situation will cause problems for them in the offseason, but who cares? They’re trying to have a team that is way, way over the cap on day 1 of the playoffs… they’ll happily deal with the consequences of having to gut parts of their roster in the offseason if it buys them a cup this year.
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